A recipe for high-end

Paul McGowan ….. Words, tastes, sights, sounds are specific recipes that activate neuro transmitters in our brains that bring meaning to each.  I know it’s the engineer in me that brings this to your attention, but how things work fascinates me. When you taste something it is a specific formulation of the 5 primary tastes […]

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CLASSE: Sigma Mono

The Sigma MONO is the reference design for the proprietary Classé amplifier platform introduced in the Delta series CA-D200 and Sigma AMP2 and AMP5 models. With completely separate chassis for each channel, the monaural amplifier architecture eliminates the possibility of crosstalk between channels and allows speaker cable lengths to be held to a minimum to […]

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PS Audio: It’s about bucking trends

Paul McGowan writes: In a recent post we learned that the size of a switching power supply is so much smaller than a conventional linear supply because the power transformer shrunk an order of several magnitudes – and it did this because we’ve managed to chop up the incoming AC into little tiny on/off bits […]

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Single or double?

Paul McGowan writes ….. Number 7 in our list of design challenges for a DAC or a preamplifier output stage is providing a single ended or balanced output. As in everything we designers do there are multiple ways to achieve this: some simple others more complex and each with different audible results. First let’s remember […]

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LATER … with Jools Holland

Later… with Jools Holland returns for the second episode in a special and very different series, filmed at Jools’s creative home, his studio in south London.  This week, Jools chats to grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal, who is working on his forthcoming seventh album. The east London rapper joins Jools virtually from his studio to talk […]

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Dave Davies: ‘I was just a crazy kid with a guitar, a cheap amp and a razor blade’

Like many other epiphanies, Dave Davies’ occurred on the road. He was relaxing in his suite at the Sheraton Hotel, Richmond, Virginia, in 1982, when five mystical “intelligences” began to communicate with him through smell. “Each separate intelligence had its own aroma,” he recalls. “One was similar to jasmine, but very deep.”  The intelligences explained […]

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From the archives: Kate Bush’s first album of new material in six years mixes yetis, snowmen and made-up wintry words. The reclusive star tells Andy Gill why she has the chills

“It’s always been a very big part of me, especially when I was a little girl,” she confirms. “I had an incredibly full life with my imagination: I used to have all sorts of trolls and things, I had a wonderful world around my toys, and invented people. I don’t mean I had imaginary friends, […]

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Zu Audio DL-103 MC phono cartridge – test review. Stereophile Magazine

In 1962, when tennis rackets were made of wood, newspeople were known for challenging the government, and the off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks was in its second year (the show closed in 2002), Nippon Columbia’s Denki Onkyo (or Den-On) division introduced to the professional audio world a brand-new moving-coil phono cartridge. Developed in cooperation with the Japan Broadcasting […]

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VINYL: Last Shop Standing: the rise, fall and rebirth of the independent record shop: an interview with Graham Jones:

I recently watched a fantastic documentary, ‘Last Shop Standing: the rise, fall and rebirth of the independent record shop’ and found it very inspiring.  Here is the trailer: It’s fantastic.  Get a copy.  It made me wonder whether the recent revival of independent record shops have a few things to teach us more generally about […]

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